{"id":430266,"date":"2022-01-17T11:39:08","date_gmt":"2022-01-17T09:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=430266"},"modified":"2022-01-17T11:42:54","modified_gmt":"2022-01-17T09:42:54","slug":"chrome-wont-let-users-delete-search-engines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/430266-chrome-wont-let-users-delete-search-engines.html","title":{"rendered":"Chrome won&#8217;t let users delete search engines"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A recent update to the Chromium codebase has removed the option to delete prepopulated search engines in the latest versions of the Chrome and Edge browsers.<\/p>\n<p>The problem was first highlighted several days ago when a number of users on a <a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/chrome\/thread\/145309626\/i-can-t-delete-any-default-search-engines-and-it-keeps-changing-to-yahoo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Google Chrome Help page<\/strong><\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/MicrosoftEdge\/comments\/s24e75\/microsoft_have_disabled_removal_of_search_engines\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Reddit thread<\/strong><\/a> complained that they were unable to delete the search engines in either browser.<\/p>\n<p>One user said their search engine kept changing to Yahoo in Chrome, despite having Google set as the default.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve tried to remove the search engines on Settings in chrome, but it doesn&#8217;t work since there is no delete button under the three dots,&#8221; the user said.<\/p>\n<p>Google Chrome comes with specific prepopulated search engines based on the most popular option in each region.<\/p>\n<p>In South Africa, it currently ships with Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and Ecosia.<\/p>\n<p>MyBroadband found that the delete option was unavailable for these search engines on one of our Windows 11 PCs running Chrome 97.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Chromium-search-engines-.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-430272\" src=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Chromium-search-engines-.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"663\" height=\"346\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Chromium-search-engines-.png 663w, https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Chromium-search-engines--600x313.png 600w, https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Chromium-search-engines--640x334.png 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 663px) 100vw, 663px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Soon after the complaints, Chromium developer Justin Donnely claimed responsibility for the issue.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The motivation was simply that if someone deleted a search engine accidentally, there&#8217;s no way to get it back, so it&#8217;s a potentially very disruptive mistake,&#8221; he explained. &#8220;I wanted to protect against that even if very few people are affected by it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He said the option to delete prepopulated search engines would mean that certain users who weren&#8217;t knowledgeable could delete prepopulated search engines and be left unable to set the suggest, new tab page, or other specialised URLs.<\/p>\n<p>However, Donnelly admitted he did not realise that users had deleted certain prepopulated search engines to avoid &#8220;search engine hijacking&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>It was evident from some responses that some applications, like McAfee, could automatically change the user&#8217;s browser to one of the populated options.<\/p>\n<p>That is because McAfee&#8217;s Secure Search functionality only works with Yahoo. When this is turned on, the search engine automatically switches to Yahoo.<\/p>\n<p>Donnelly said the Chromium team was looking into how they could prevent automatic changes to search engine choices and would bring back to delete option in the next update.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It should return in either Chrome 98 or 99, releasing in early February and early March, respectively,&#8221; Donnelly said.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Now read: <a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/software\/426256-microsoft-rolls-back-controversial-default-browser-setting-on-windows-11.html\" rel=\"bookmark\">Microsoft rolls back controversial default browser setting on Windows 11<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chrome and Edge users have complained they are unable to delete search engines from their settings pages that are &#8220;hijacking&#8221; their browser&#8217;s default search option.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":221903,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[37194,1137,75698,30102,13567,14109],"class_list":["post-430266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-chromium","tag-google-chrome","tag-justin-donnely","tag-microsoft-edge","tag-search-engines","tag-web-browsers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430266"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430266"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":430292,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430266\/revisions\/430292"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}